Hitherto, there has been proposed an atomizer having two suction pipes connected to the suction port of a pump mechanism and leading to the neck and bottom portions of a liquid vessel so that the atomizer may be used in both normal (upright) and inverted orientations. In this type of atomizer, the neck portion of the liquid vessel has to have a diameter large enough to allow two suction pipes to pass therethrough. If the diameter of the neck portion is too small, it is not possible to stably support the atomizer at the center of the neck portion, and as a result, the atomizer is held in an unstable manner which hinders a smooth atomizing manipulation.
In this type of atomizer, the switching valve for switching the suction passage between two suction pipes is mounted separately from the suction pipes, undesirably restricting the space in the liquid vessel.
The inventors of the present invention have experimentarily produced an atomizer usable in normal and inverted orientations in which the suction port for operation in the inverted orientation is provided at the upper portion of the cylinder of the pump mechanism. In this case, the liquid is sucked from the suction port for operation in the inverted orientation only after a piston has been fully reset to maximize the pressurizing chamber, so that it is necessary to construct the pump mechanism to have a strength to withstand a large vacuum. In addition, with this arrangement, it has been difficult to suck a sufficiently large amount of liquid into the pressurizing chamber.